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Born September 6th 1939 in Akron, Ohio, USA. From the age of
nine, Coe was in and out of reform schools, correction centers and prisons.
According to his publicity handout, he spent time on Death Row after killing a
fellow inmate who demanded oral sex. When Rolling Stone magazine questioned
this, Coe responded with a song, ‘I’d Like To Kick The Shit Out Of You’.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Coe was paroled in 1967 and took his songs
about prison life to Shelby Singleton who released two albums on his SSS label.
Coe wrote Tanya Tucker’s 1974 US country number 1, ‘Would You Lay With Me (In A
Field Of Stone)?’. He took to calling himself Davey Coe – the Mysterious
Rhinestone Cowboy, performing in a mask, and driving a hearse. He satirized the
themes of country music with hilarious additions to Steve Goodman’s ‘You Never
Even Called Me By My Name’, but has often used the clichés himself. His defiant
stance and love of motorbikes, multiple tattoos and ultra-long hair made him a
natural ‘Nashville outlaw’, which he wrote about in the self-glorifying
‘Longhaired Redneck’ and ‘Willie, Waylon And Me’.
In 1978 Johnny Paycheck had a US country number 1 with Coe’s
‘Take This Job And Shove It’, which inspired a film of the same title in 1981,
and Coe’s own successes included the witty ‘Divers Do It Deeper’ (1978), ‘Jack
Daniels If You Please’ (1979), ‘Now I Lay Me Down To Cheat’ (1982), ‘The Ride’
(1983), which conjures up a meeting between Coe and Hank Williams, and ‘Mona
Lisa’s Lost Her Smile’ (1984), which reached number 2 on the US country charts,
his highest position as a performer. Recordings with other performers include
‘Don’t Cry Darlin” and ‘This Bottle (In My Hand)’ with George Jones, ‘I’ve
Already Cheated On You’ with Willie Nelson, and ‘Get A Little Dirt On Your
Hands’ with Bill Anderson.
Coe’s 1978 album Human Emotions was about his divorce – one
side being ‘Happy Side’ and the other ‘Su-I-side’. The controversial cover of
Texas Moon shows the bare backsides of his band and crew, and he has also
released two mail-order albums of explicit songs, Nothing Sacred and
Underground.
Coe appears incapable of separating the good from the
ridiculous and his albums are erratic. At his best, he is a sensitive,
intelligent writer. Similarly, his stage performances with his Tennessee Hat
Band differ wildly in length and quality: sometimes it is non-stop music,
sometimes it features conjuring tricks. Coe’s main trick, however, is to remain
successful, as country music fans grow exasperated with his over-the-top publicity.
He may still be an outlaw but as Waylon Jennings remarks in ‘Living Legends’,
that only means double-parking on Music Row.
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